1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to storage devices, host devices, circuit boards, liquid receptacles, systems, and the like.
2. Related Art
Some ink cartridges (liquid receptacles) used in ink jet printers are provided with storage devices. Information such as the color of the ink, the amount of ink that is consumed, and so on is stored in such a storage device. Data regarding the amount of ink that is consumed is sent from the main printer unit (a host device) to the storage device, and is written into a non-volatile memory or the like included in the storage device. With such a system, the host device is notified that the data has been successfully written by the storage device returning an acknowledgment. In other words, the storage device receives the data from the host device, writes the data into the memory, and returns an acknowledgment to the host device after the data has been successfully written. Upon receiving the acknowledgment, the host device sends data to the next storage device. Normally, writing data into the non-volatile memory requires significantly more time than communicating the data, and thus increasing the number of storage devices leads to an increase in the overall time required for the write processes.
Meanwhile, because ink cartridges are normally configured to be replaceable, it is easy for contact problems to occur at the areas that form electrical connection portions, and there is thus the risk of communication errors, write errors, and so on occurring due to connection problems. It is desirable to reduce the amount of processing time for writing from the host device to the storage devices in order to suppress the occurrence of such problems.
In response to this problem, JP-A-2002-14870, for example, discloses a method for writing data to a plurality of storage devices simultaneously. However, there are problems with this method as well, such as that the host device cannot receive an acknowledgment from each of the storage devices.